One More Time
by Dragonlord Stephi
Summary: Gherta tries to pick up the pieces after the collapse of the GED Organization's experiment, but a perfect stranger makes it rather difficult.


One More Time

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**A/N: So, I was rewatching Fantastic Children, and even though the fandom is dead, I could not help but write my own take on a Palza x Mel reunion... after all, they were one of the few with no happy ending! Even Thoma, Soreto, and Agi got off a little better than the "Separated Constellations"...**

**For my KttK readers, I'm sorry this wasn't an update to the fics you were expecting, but I honestly could not help myself. I'm working on KttK fics as you read this (probably).**

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_Is there a story without happy endings? A story where the lovers poise their hands towards the sky and beg, "One more time"? _

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"I'm sorry," Gherta told Soreto as Agi and Hasmodai carried Hiisuma's body- both his child and true form- away. "I can't come with you. You understand, don't you?"

"I'm sorry too, Mel," Soreto sighed. "You should have told us, all that time ago."

"There's no point worrying over something that happened over a hundred years ago," Gherta said. "Though I can honestly say you look absolutely the same."

Soreto laughed grimly. "Hopefully that will change now. I haven't talked it over with Agi yet, but now that we've found Tina… I think… I think I'm done switching bodies. I think I'll let myself forget and grow up and maybe even grow old. Can you imagine that, Mel? After all these centuries, I've never once grown old."

"It's not fun," Gherta replied, and Soreto laughed again.

"Nonetheless. I'm done being Soreto." She shrugged. "Plus, did I ever tell you how much I hate these cloaks?" She plucked at their black cloaks and made a face. "They blended in Befort in the 1500's, but nowadays they completely stand out."

"Not that you can't conceal yourself when you wish," Gherta replied. "That should be incredibly handy."

"Ah, whatever." Soreto frowned. "Are you sure? Even… even if you forget… you could come with us. Just one last time. Mel."

Gherta bit her lip and looked at her feet. Back on Greecia, hadn't she and Soreto been good partners? She couldn't honestly call her a friend- Soreto had always been more aloof, and too serious to really have fun with- but she had cared, and they had indeed had some fun times. Gherta cracked a smile. "Do you remember when we stole Agi's lunch three days in a row?"

Soreto nodded. "Or when we caught him singing that cradle song of his and dancing around the lab when he thought he was alone?"

Gherta chuckled. "I caught him making a declaration of love to his mirror, and he told me to never tell another soul."

"Oh, really? To who?"

"You, of course." Gherta shrugged. "If you're really going to give up being Soreto, you'll forget in a couple of months anyway, so what's the harm in telling you?"

Soreto grinned. She didn't grin often. Maybe she was already forgetting. "Ah, Mel," Soreto shook her head. "I've missed you."

That surprised Gherta. "Really?"

"Yeah. But there's no need to feel guilty about absolutely abandoning and tricking your friends for your own selfish reasons and ending up getting captured and tortured because of it," Soreto replied, actually employing sarcasm for once. "You're going to forget about it anyway."

"So, it was nice seeing you again," Gherta said as Agi called for Soreto.

"Yes, it was. I'm glad I could see you one last time," Soreto said. "Goodbye, Mel."

Gherta waved. "It's Gherta, Soreto."

Soreto shook her head. "My name's Flo."

* * *

For Gherta, the next couple of months were pure torture.

She had absolutely no idea what happened to her gorgeous experiment, which was her life's work and billions of sponsor dollars manifested- and also a destroyed piece of junk. She had a feeling she had known that it had to be that way, but she couldn't remember.

When she got home, she destroyed her shrine to Conrad Rugen. For some reason, it was more painful to see than before. It took her nearly ten trips to the recycling bin to get rid of all her research notes too, but then she had to take another ten trips to her fireplace, having decided they were better off resting as ashes.

And then years passed.

Gherta turned fifty-three and resigned her position of the GED Organization. Her retirement was sort of early, but deserved, and she had plenty of funds to manage it. The government was not very pleased with her decision- she was, after all, one of the best scientists to ever grace the Earth- and even if the GED Organization had failed, they felt she could be put to use somewhere else. Gherta politely declined.

She didn't want to become one of the old ladies who spent all day on their rocking chairs, or off their rockers, and found her mind liked to be kept busy, so she started collecting a large amount of books. At first, they were all on Conrad Rugen.

"No," she said. "I am getting out of this rut."

Gherta turned fifty-four.

It was a pleasant day outside. The sun was shining down, but not too brightly, and the sky was a beautiful, watery blue. The sight saddened her, aching somewhere she couldn't place, because although the sky was as blue as she'd ever seen it in her fifty-four years, she thought that perhaps it'd been more cheerful before.

She was tending to her garden. It was rather pathetic. All she'd managed to grow were several potatoes and a tomato or two. It occurred to her she was much better at killing things than growing and nurturing for them, but this thought came from a place in her mind that both made her deeply uncomfortable and that she wasn't able to access, so she paid it no real heed. The weeds were growing in scraggly stubbornness, despite her attacks with the spade.

"Aah!" she had to drop the spade as a deep pain raced through her fingers. Arthritis. She knew working so close to the Zone might age her prematurely, but so far she looked remarkably young for fifty-four. She'd thought she had gotten away scotch-free, but evidently her own mars were much more subtle than, say, Sinon's. Poor Sinon… Gherta was often guilty over the fate of Sinon, Kirchner, Gina, Grass, and Azada, the human guinea pigs in her tests for the Zone. "I should've gone myself," she whispered. She would have died, just as all of the guinea pigs did, but at least she would've died with a clean conscience.

"Gone where?"

Gherta stood from her crouched position and eyed the stranger standing on the other side of her small picket fence. "Shopping," she said.

"Nice garden," he said, and she blushed, because it was anything but nice.

"Can I help you?" she asked, getting a little irritated.

"Yes, I'm lost," he said. "I was looking for an expert in the life of Conrad Rugen. A Dr. Hawksbee? They told me this was her house."

"She moved," Gherta lied. "Left years ago."

"Oh. Well, that's a shame." The man sighed. He looked to be about her age, but his hands shook even more than hers when he reached over, picked up the spade, and handed it to her. "I'm sorry to bother you, ma'am."

When she reached to take the spade, something in that brief second in which their hands touched sparked a reaction, and Gherta dropped the spade again, for an entirely different reason. "Why are you interested… in the life of Conrad Rugen?"

"I'm not," he said. "I came here to talk to Gherta."

"Have we met before?" Gherta asked.

"No, I don't think so," the man replied, but he was searching her eyes for any sign of familiarity, just as she was doing the same to him. "I don't think we have."

"I must've mistaken you for someone else, then," Gherta covered quickly. "My apologies. Would you like to come in for a cup of tea?"

"I would appreciate that very much," the man said. "I'm Mark. Mark Antony."

"Nice to meet you, Mark Antony. I'm Cleopatra," Gherta joked. "No, not really. I'm Gherta Hawksbee. You've found her."

"Wonderful," Mark said. "I wanted to give her this."

He held out a thin, yellow hexagonal prism.

Gherta took it tentatively. Hadn't she seen this before?

_"__But don't worry, Palza. We're going to get married very soon, and then we'll be together for all eternity." It reminded Gherta of her own, but it was different, younger and lighter and somewhat more airy, the sort of voice one gets when hopelessly in love. That confused her. She'd never been hopelessly in love before. Had she?_

_ "__But…" Another voice. "They wanted to be together forever too…" The stars in the sky… that's what he was talking about. The constellations forever separated from each other by either fate or happenstance, or maybe even the cosmic king ruling against their favor._

"Separated because of a sin," Gherta whispered, and turned to face the man. "Palza?"

"Mel," he said. "It's nice to see you again."

Gherta shoved the tube at him. "Idiot!" she hissed.

Palza frowned. "WHAT?"

"You heard me! Do you know what I went through because of you? I lost my memories earlier than the rest because of emotional distress! I was captured and tortured by Dumas! I was continually berated by Damien for things I couldn't remember! WHY DIDN'T YOU STAY BY ME LIKE YOU PROMISED?!"

This was not how she imagined her reunion with Palza, back when she remembered Palza enough to envision such a thing. Usually, it involved a great amount of tears, hugging, and dare she say it, kissing. After all, once upon a time, they were supposed to get married. This was just not… just not… not how it was supposed to go.

But she was so infuriated by how he'd acted. Hadn't she asked him? Hadn't she begged him to come with her? _Palza, you traitor! What's going to happen to me if you- if you… We were the constellations in the sky! We were supposed to be together forever, for all eternity! This is not- NO! Palza, you're not Conrad Rugen. You're not Conrad Rugen, you're my Palza, you're my Palza, you're my Palza…_

"My Palza," she whispered, and as she said it, the anger left.

"I'm sorry," he said. "But… I wanted to see you. One last time."

"Do you still want to come in for tea?" she asked.

Palza smiled. "Sure. Oh, and… is there a place I could spend the night? I'm out of money. I spent all of mine finding you."

"I have a couch," Mel said, opening the door and sidestepping a stack of boxes. "I apologize for the mess, but I was cleaning out a bunch of junk."

"Really?" Palza tried to lift the lid of one of the boxes and peer inside, but Mel slapped his hand away.

"Don't go through a lady's things," she said, and cracked a smile. "Jeez, no wonder you couldn't get married."

Palza smiled back. "Yeah. It was totally my fault."

"You better believe it, you cosmic wimp," Mel shot back, pouring a cup of tea. "So, where've you been, these past hundred years or so?"

"Med school," he said. "I'm a doctor. Isn't that ironic? Me. The scientist who worked on finding better ways to kill people is now a doctor."

"Our work was supposed to help people live," Mel reminded him.

"That's not what it ended up doing, though," he said. "All we have to do is look at ourselves for proof of that."

"Shut up," Mel said. "So, tell me… how exactly did you find the records of our memories?"

"I got them in the mail about two years ago, from a young woman… well, she's just a girl, only fourteen, I guess… Her name's Flo."

"Soreto," Mel hissed. "Darn you." Though she had to hand it to her. How on Earth had she managed to find Palza when all these years Mel had been unable to?

Ah, it didn't matter. It wasn't like Soreto could tell her anymore, anyway. Soreto was gone, hiding behind the amnesiac Flo.

"Soreto?" Palza frowned. "I have her address still."

"Don't bother. She wouldn't remember and I have no idea what she and Agi did to their memory records. Probably destroyed them," Mel shrugged.

"All right, then," Palza closed his eyes in a content smile. "You make good tea."

"Um, thanks?"

"Yeah. I'm just going to have a little nap. Could you wake me up in an hour or so?"

"Sure." Mel ran up to her room and glanced in the mirror. Her eyes were getting bluer again, but her hair showed no signs of going white, probably because she hadn't regained it naturally. Ah, well. She thought of the Mel in her mind, the young, twenty-year-old scientist madly in love with Palza and deeply naïve about the way the world worked. Then she compared that to the other Mel she recalled, when she'd transferred her soul to the body of a child to find the lost Tina. That Mel had round cheeks and a sad smile not befitting of a twelve-year-old. But no… she'd been thirteen when she'd lost her memories. She'd cheated and set the body switch earlier than the other Befort children, hoping to see Palza again… and now he was in her living room.

She looked nothing like the Mel she remembered. She had Gherta's face.

"I'm sorry," Mel said. "I'm sorry, Gherta, that I stole your body. And maybe your soul. What happens to the souls of the bodies I take? Do they attach themselves to mine? Am I no longer Mel? It wouldn't be fair to be Mel anymore, after all the people I've stolen lives from." And she wasn't just talking about the GED Organization either.

Mel climbed back down the stairs, deep in thought, and noticed Palza's calm body, hunched over in sleep. Tenderness welling in her heart, she moved to stroke back a piece of hair falling in his eyes when she stopped cold.

No. No no no no no…

She pressed two fingers to his wrist. Nothing. Then she tried the spot on his neck, hoping and praying. No palpitation. He was…

Mel grabbed the two tubes and threw them at her feet, trying to smash them, but whatever material they were made out of was too strong to be even cracked in a hissy fit. "No!" she screeched. "That's not fair! It's not fair! Why did you have to make me lose him one more time? Wasn't twice enough for you?"

She had no idea who she was asking, though.

She picked the tube up and clutched it to her chest, sobbing. _Like the constellations forever separated… they would touch every hundred years but never quite remain together for eternity. _

_ "…__They wanted to be together forever too…" _Palza had been right.

Mel grabbed his limp hand and brought it to her heart. "That was cruel, Palza… to make me lose you again. You should have left me swimming in my blissful ignorance."

After all, especially in Mel's case, ignorance was bliss.


End file.
